AMD (AMD) CEO Su Keeps Low Profile in China as Nvidia (NVDA) Sees Market Share Evaporate

AMD CEO Lisa Su adopted a low-key approach during a late May 2026 visit to China, a stark contrast to the high-visibility trip by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang days earlier, highlighting diverging diplomatic strategies in the world’s most politically charged AI chip market. The tactics come as their fortunes diverge. Nvidia’s market share in China has crumbled from 50% to effectively zero under U.S. export controls, Huang has acknowledged, while AMD holds a 4% share, according to IDC. Su met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who welcomed AMD’s deeper cooperation, a senior-level meeting that Beijing did not grant Huang. AMD generated about 20% of its revenue from China, and Su emphasized continued close partnerships with Chinese customers. AMD’s broader product portfolio—including CPUs, consumer GPUs, and FPGAs—gives it more access points than Nvidia’s AI accelerators. However, its push faces hurdles: a person familiar with the matter said AMD sold significant AI chips to Alibaba last year, but the cloud giant needed substantial engineering resources to debug them due to a weaker software ecosystem versus Nvidia’s CUDA. Huang has estimated China’s AI chip market at $50 billion.